Wisconsin: Dems Lost Union Issue, Now Losing Jobs Issue

Big Labor has forced the good people of Wisconsin to have a “do-over” of their 2010 Gubernatorial contest. Not happy with the results or the reforms which Gov. Walker campaigned on and implemented, unions spent millions from it’s members paychecks to force next month’s recall vote. Their anger was raised, obviously, by Walker’s reforms, which curbed the unions’ ability to extract overly generous compensation and benefits from taxpayers. It was this reform of collective bargaining that sparked the recall campaign. Now the unions don’t want to talk about it.

It is easy to understand why. Big Labor’s anointed candidate, Kathleen Falk, who campaigned explicitly on restoring unions’ perks and privileges, got trounced in the democrat primary. She even lost her home county, home to thousands of rank-and-file union members, by over 30 points. If union democrats aren’t buying Big Labor’s line, ain’t nobody else going to.

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On primary night last week, We Are Wisconsin, a union-funded campaign put out this breathless statement:

As governor, Tom Barrett will reverse Scott Walker’s worst-in-the-nation jobs record, end the corruption Walker and his cronies have brought to Madison, and finally halt the Republican war on women–a war Walker and his GOP allies have taken further here than any other state in America.

Yeah, I didn’t see anything about collective bargaining either. It is notable that the issue which provoked the recall is so politically unpopular that even a union-front group won’t mention it. So, the unions are basing the recall now on jobs. They got a big boost from Obama’s Labor Department last month:

While Wisconsin Gov, Scott Walker (R) fights to keep his job in a recall election scheduled for June, he is being forced to confront a harsh reality in his state: It lost more jobs during the past 12 months than any other state in the United States.

Wisconsin lost 23,900 jobs between March 2011 and March 2012, according to data released Tuesday by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. The state’s lead in job losses is significantly greater than the rest of the 50 states: No other state lost more than 3,500 jobs.

State officials said they show a gain of 23,321 jobs (public and private) between December 2010 and December 2011, which represents Gov. Scott Walker’s first full year in office.

That stands in sharp contrast to a commonly used and widely reported monthly jobs measure, the Current Employment Survey, which earlier this year showed an estimated loss of 33,900 jobs in Wisconsin for the same 12-month period.

The Department of Labor number, showing a job loss, was based on a survey of employers in the state. Their survey drew from a sample of 3.5% of employers in Wisconsin. The state’s quarterly census, however, is based on detailed data from every employer in the state. Every state compiles this census data and sends it to the federal Department of Labor, who use the data to adjust their own estimates and surveys.

So, who you going to believe? The numbers or someone’s guess at the numbers?